294 Death of Burnc-Jones [1898 



" 2&th May. — To-day Mr. Gladstone is being buried in Westminster 

 Abbey. 



" 6th June. — Cockerell is a treasure, arranging my books and get- 

 ting me others. He is full of interesting recollections of Morris. 

 Apropos of the lovely little Kelmscott volume, containing ' The Night- 

 ingale and the Cuckoo,' he assures me that Morris had never heard the 

 nightingale sing, and that he used to complain of it ; also what seems 

 even more incredible, that he had not read the poem through, and was 

 waiting to do so for it to be in print. The proof-sheets came the day 

 he died, and he never read them. We are putting the new bookplate 

 into our Kelmscott books, where it looks a natural part of the volumes 

 as the bookplate was cut by the man Morris employed for his armorial 

 designs. Cockerell has been of the greatest use to me. arranging my 

 papers and giving me new interests in life. I have written several 

 Sonnets and an inscription in verse for the table Mrs. Morris gave 

 me ; my mind is vigorous and clear." [The table here referred to was 

 the dining-table used by Morris and his family when they lived at 

 the Red House, and given to me by Mrs. Morris when she was dis- 

 persing her furniture on leaving her house in Hammersmith.] 



In the meantime Anne and Judith had returned from Egypt. They 

 had been lingering on at Paris, but had been hastened back by my illness, 

 and were now in London, having taken a house there for Judith's 

 London season. 



' 19^/1 June. — Burne- Jones is dead. This is a vast misfortune. He 

 was to have painted Judith as one of the figures for his last picture. 

 ' The Vale of Avalon,' but that will never now be. According to his 

 wish he is to be cremated, and then buried at Rottingdean. It is an 

 honour for Sussex that it should hold his ashes. 



" $th July. — Percy Wyndham, who has been down to see me, tells 

 me that he had spent the afternoon with Burne-Jones two days before 

 he died. Burne-Jones was in the highest possible spirits, playing at 

 ' Bear ' with Pamela's children. Later, however, a friend had dined 

 with him, to whom he had talked gloomily of the prospects of the world 

 and of the human race. The friend had remarked that no one should 

 have such pessimistic views who was not an atheist. To which Burne- 

 Jones had exclaimed, ' Thank God, we are not that.' He had been 

 taken ill suddenly in the night, and had died in half-an-hour. With 

 Madeline, too, I have had much conversation about Burne-Jones. She 

 had written me a beautiful letter about him and Morris, and had asked 

 me to write a sonnet for her about them. ' I should like it better,' she 

 says in it, ' than anything else you could possibly do for me, and you 

 are the only person almost who could, if even you can. and I will wait 

 no matter how long for it, and if I depart from this life from pure old 

 age while waiting, well, I shall hope that then I shall be even better able 



